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In more remote areas overseas, the USO and the Red Cross provided soldiers with dresses and costume materials. "I was doing a version of a camp show in our spare time," recalled Ben Small, who as a gay Army Air Corpsman was stationed at an atoll near New Guinea, "a little drag number in a parachute. It was just a matter of getting guys together who liked to entertain and putting on a show for the different outfits on the island. I had the effrontery to write to the USO in San Francisco saying, 'Do you have any funny costumes?' Usually it took two months for something to arrive, [but] a couple of weeks later I got called in [to the office] and they said, 'How come you get special air mail delivery?' I said, 'I don't even know what it is' and they said, 'Open it up!' Well, it was dresses. Gold lamé. You have never seen such a collection of shit in your life! Nobody was upset; they just said, 'What the hell is this?' And I said, 'We wanted to do a show and we needed some costumes.' Well, here's everybody in the office from the lieutenant on down trying on dresses! Everybody suddenly becomes a drag queen! That's how we got costumes for the show."

-Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire, pg. 84

The most famous of the lesbian proprietors was Eva Kotchever, a Polish Jewish émigré who went by the name Eve Addams (also spelled Adams), an androgynous pseudonym whose biblical origins her Protestant persecutors might well have found blasphemous. Called "the queen of the third sex" by one paper and a "man-hater" by another, after the police crackdown of 1925 she opened a tearoom at 129 MacDougal Street that quickly became popular with the after-theatre crowd. A sign at the door announced "Men are admitted but not welcome."

-Before Air-Conditioning by Arthur Miller - "Every window in New York was open, and on the streets venders manning little carts chopped ice and sprinkled colored sugar over mounds of it for a couple of pennies", and Coney Island in 1940.

-Sample rooms from the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Interesting bit about housing reform around the turn of the century:

No room in a now existing tenement house shall hereafter be occupied for living purposes unless it shall have a window upon the street, or upon a yard no less than four feet deep, or upon a court or a shaft of no less than twenty-five square feet in area, open to the sky without roof or skylight, or unless such room has a sash window opening into an adjoining room in the same apartment[...]

-Courtesy of the Council of Books in Wartime over one hundred million books were shipped and sold cheaply to US armed forces around the globe:

"Dog-eared and moldy and limp from the humidity those books go up the line," wrote a war reporter from the southwest Pacific. "Because they are what they are, because they can be packed in a hip pocket or snuck into a shoulder pack, men are reading where men have never read before." A lieutenant in the Marshall Islands wrote of seeing men devour books "by a dim flashlight under a shelter half, even after the air-raid siren has already blown and they should be in a foxhole." Another soldier reported that "the books are read until they fall apart."

The Pneumatic Tube system was once an essential part of New York life. Cylinders containing letters, packages, or at least in one case a live cat, were shot through tubes by air pressure, at a rate of 35 mph, and these tubes ran all over New York from Harlem to the Lower East Side, from Canal Street to the Planetarium, even from Manhattan to Brooklyn itself. [...] At the height of its operation it carried around 95,000 letters a day, or 1/3 of all the mail being routed throughout New York city.

-A documentary about tuberculosis in America, and The Doctor Who Made a Revolution: "By the time Baker retired from the New York City Health Department in 1923, she was famous across the nation for saving the lives of 90,000 inner-city children. The public health measures she implemented, many still in use today, have saved the lives of millions more worldwide."

'We've often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we'd like to spend it together.' -Letter to D, André Gorz

It feels a little odd opening a Captain America reclist with a quote from the open love letter of a French social philosopher, but the heart wants what it wants, and the words are easily lifted (the term, "obsessionally concerned for each other" could also be re-applied). My submersion in this particular fandom started off with a slow 'well, maybe' and moved quickly to an 'oh hell.' About two weeks in I realized that there were way too many excellent fics for me to keep track of in my normal way, and so this list was begun. It's since become something of a monster and, although it will hopefully keep growing, it still shows only a fraction of what's out there. As a reference point I'm hoping it'll help me remember some shorter gems and avoid wondering, 'wait, did I read that?' [April 15]

Hurricane by saezutteSummary: Welcome to the inner workings of [Steve and Bucky's] mind[s] / So dark and foul I can't disguise [their dramatic lives as a superhero and a super assassin respectively] / can't disguise

Lost Women Found: "How did it happen that at the great cultural crossroads of postwar New York there was a lone woman writing songs on guitar with a sophistication of lyric and melody unmatched by any other folk songwriter of the time?"

Moving through Durrell's Alexandria Quartet: "We live" writes Pursewarden somewhere, "lives based upon selective fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time--not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed." -Balthazar

If your introduction almost makes me feel guilty for wanting to read the book than you're doing it wrong. Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians was still worth pushing past that bizarre starter. Florence Nightingale, for example:

As for her voice, it was true of it, even more than of her countenance, that it "had that in it one must fain call master." Those clear tones were in no need of emphasis: "I never heard her raise her voice," said one of her companions. Only, when she had spoken, it seemed as if nothing could follow but obedience. Once, when she had given some direction, a doctor ventured to remark that the thing could not be done. "But it must be done," said Miss Nightingale. A chance bystander, who heard the words, never forgot through all his life the irresistible authority of them. And they were spoken quietly- very quietly indeed.

There is a delightful story of Brookner arriving at a publishing party, lingering for a few moments with a friend before disappearing in the crush. Two minutes later the friend was surprised to see her making her way back out. 'But Anita,' the friend protested, 'you've only been here five minutes.' 'And I'm so happy that three of them were spent with you,' Brookner replied.

-Juliet Jacques on football:

If I want a poetic take on the inevitability of death I’ll read Beckett, and if I want a critique of Judaeo-Christian values, I’ll read Nietzsche. (You can put your own Joey Barton joke here.) Neither offers the joyful unpredictability of a football match, though, nor any opportunity to tell a small assembly of Grimsby Town fans, through song, that not only are they rubbish, but also that they stink of fish.x

The sky glows one side black, three sides purple.The Yellow River's ice closes, fish and dragons die.Bark three inches thick cracks across the grain,Carts a hundred piculs heavy mount the river's water.Flowers of frost on the grass are as big as coins,Brandished swords will not pierce the foggy sky,Crashing ice flies in the swirling seas,And cascades hang noiseless in the mountains, rainbows of jade.

First off, a brief rumble of Canadian nationalism before I forget. The Paris Review has an excellent interview with Robertson Davies from 1989. I have, of course, read one book by Davies (otherwise I would've lost my Canadian Merit badge), but clearly I should finish the Deptford Trilogy, because he's delightful as hell:

They say they’re full of coincidence and this, that or the other; but the fact is that my life seems to be much fuller of coincidence and curious happenings than the lives of critics. What I mean is, the kind of mind which makes a critic is analytical, cool, an infinitely, unenviably, cautious mind. A recent piece of professorial criticism of What’s Bred in the Bone was very severe with me for my attraction to arcane lore and weird belief—no use explaining that to me the arcane lore isn’t arcane at all, and makes wonderful sense, and that almost all belief is strange, if you catch it with the light falling on it in a certain way.

Now, on to business. If you were to ask me why I ship Erwin/Levi I'd have to gesture vaguely towards Tumblr and rattle off a bunch of phrases that sound like AO3 tags ('established relationship', 'size kink', 'domesticity', 'D/s overtones', etc.). Broken down or fleshed out, they're a compelling match and fortunately, so's the fic.

But first up is David Grann's Trial by Fire, a 2009 profile of Cameron Todd Willingham in The New Yorker.

Seeing Jeremy Brett as Maxim de Winter feels a little strange to me, (possibly because he has a sort of natural warmth and resonance that I've never associated with the character) but I'm still enjoying this adaptation of Rebecca from 1979.

J.L.Carr's A Month in the Country and John Meade Falkner's Moonfleet are both beautiful books, and I need to remember to pick up a copy of each (particularly the Carr, since the NYRB does such lovely covers).

I've been loving Elementary over the past few months, but couple their hints about Sherlock's past with this article and suddenly I have concerns:

The producers have yet to start writing for the actual character, but Doherty says they're already discussing what traits this Adler would need to be yin to Holmes' yang. "As we build our Irene and we get into more detail, obviously, she has to be fairly unique, in that someone like Sherlock found himself attracted to her," he says. (x)

There's a couple of things about this quote that rub me the wrong way, but it comes down to the fact that they seem to be creating Irene based on what would interest Sherlock instead of simply imagining what her character would be like in the universe that they've created. She doesn't need to be redesigned, she needs to be updated, and if they do it properly than Holmes will find her interesting just as he did in SCAN. ( cut for structural griping )

Of course I read something like this and get all grumpy and wonder if I'll end up dropping the show like I dropped Sherlock- and then the newest episode airs and my heart melts like a marshmallow in the microwave. I've built up a lot of affection for this show and its characters, and they'd have to do something pretty damned awful (and ongoing) to get me to quit.

Moby Dick Big Read - "‘I have written a blasphemous book’, said Melville when his novel was first published in 1851, ‘and I feel as spotless as the lamb’." I'm terrible at listening to audiobooks, but I may have to put the effort in for this one (and clearly Tilda Swinton needs to do this kind of thing more often, because I could listen to her all day).

I understand why, among writers, who are usually endless-appetite readers as well, the reading of books other than Real Books is a vaguely shameful activity. We all live on borrowed time, and there’s DeLillo and Nabokov and Pynchon I’ll never get to because of the hours I’ve spent reading… well, I’m even afraid to tell you their names. You can and will judge. But I do it anyway because sometimes I just need the comfort of falling into something that is ready to catch me. I need it to hold me. That feeling is a little sacred to me, actually. I guard my escape quite jealously, because there are times when I need it to go on.

You better not tell me you forgot - Terry Castle reviews Lisa Cohen's biography, "of three now almost forgotten lesbian women: the American heiress and intellectual polymath Esther Murphy; Mercedes de Acosta, the Cuban-American Hollywood screenwriter, memoirist and seductress extraordinaire (Garbo and Dietrich and Isadora Duncan were among her conquests); and the brittle yet pioneering British fashion editor and stylesetter Madge Garland."

The Angels came, the Ponds departed, and overall I was unimpressed. Which is really rather horrible, because I loved the Ponds! Donna Noble owns my heart, but they were certainly my second favourite companions. And yet, despite some teary blinking at Amy's goodbye, I was relatively unmoved and I'm not quite sure why.

Beat Boutique - "To delve into the history and holdings of music libraries is to greatly complicate one's understanding of the term selling out"

What did you say? I can't hear you... - Kathryn Hepburn reads a letter she wrote to Spencer Tracy eighteen years after his death. The video is absolutely heartbreaking, and makes me want to go looking for a good biography (the little I know is from the Scandals of Classic Hollywood Series, which is excellent and really, really fun when it's not busy being a bit tragic).

Who ever thought that I'd be writing you a letter. You died on the 10th of June in 1967. My golly, Spence, that's twenty-four years ago. That's a long time. Are you happy finally?

1491 by Charles C. Mann - A fascinating article about the 'pristine myth' of North America, and the human history of the Amazon rain forest.

To Elizabeth Fenn, the smallpox historian, the squabble over numbers obscures a central fact. Whether one million or 10 million or 100 million died, she believes, the pall of sorrow that engulfed the hemisphere was immeasurable. Languages, prayers, hopes, habits, and dreams—entire ways of life hissed away like steam. The Spanish and the Portuguese lacked the germ theory of disease and could not explain what was happening (let alone stop it). Nor can we explain it; the ruin was too long ago and too all-encompassing. In the long run, Fenn says, the consequential finding is not that many people died but that many people once lived. The Americas were filled with a stunningly diverse assortment of peoples who had knocked about the continents for millennia. "You have to wonder," Fenn says. "What were all those people up to in all that time?"

One of the things I miss about seasons 4 and 5 of Supernatural is the structure of Sam and Dean’s involvement in the Apocalypse. They were dealing with incredibly powerful beings but, due to the rules those beings played by, the Winchesters were able to meet them on relatively equal footing. Their power came from their humanity, their free will, and their sheer Sam-and-Dean-ness. It made sense that they were at the centre of everything, because everything in their universe had been planned to orbit around them. I never found myself wondering why War was in the mid-west, because where else would he be, but within driving distance?

Seasons 6 and 7 have lacked this narrative trick. There’s nothing connecting Sam and Dean to the actions of the Leviathan or to the civil war in Heaven, beyond their own private interest. When Dean told Cas that they could have helped him fight Raphael I couldn’t help but wonder how. In this case, Cas was right when he told Dean that he was just a man. Dean’s humanity is his source of power and it’s let him triumph over some incredible obstacles on Earth. However, Heaven is a different setting entirely, and neither he nor Sam have any real power there. Their souls merely turn them into objects of power that others can wield with permission.

The vessel story-line gave Sam and Dean a direct connection to the Apocalypse, the angels’ need for their consent gave them a measure of power, and the heavenly imitation of the Winchester family dynamic (absent father, devoted older brother, rebellious younger) gave them a personal connection to the narrative and turned their own story into something universal. It was a clever, practical way to make the central characters of the show also the centre of the show’s wider universe. Of course, the problem with this is, how do you go back from it? The writers have brought in lesser gods and leviathans, but they haven’t brought in anything that mimics the effect of the vessel plot. There’s no clear, useful connection between the Winchesters and the enormous forces they’re fighting against (at least, not yet), and no real effort has been made to bring those creatures down to Sam and Dean’s level- or to raise Sam and Dean up to theirs.

Or, in other words:-The first three seasons focused on smaller, Monster-of-the-Week stories, with a seasonal plot-arc centred around the decisions made by the Winchester family and their repercussions. -Seasons 4 and 5 took the same basic plot (Things Winchesters Do) and applied it on a universal scale. -In the last two seasons the writers have tried to retain the grand scale of the apocalypse story, but they’ve gotten rid of the machinery that allowed that story to be told. In attempting to have the best of both worlds they’ve ended up with something worse.

I'm currently tracking about 25 fills on the kink meme, though the number fluctuates according to what's new and what's done (and how good I am at keeping up to date). All Charles/Erik, unless otherwise stated. New stories will be marked by a *. Updated with 7 new stories on 02/10/12.

Title:alea iacta estAuthor: AnonSummary: Erik the underage alpha imprints on Charles, a 29 year-old omega, at an ice cream shop. Hot and sweet, with a serious undertone that deals with the legalities of an alpha/omega society. Charles is understandably wary, and Erik is confused and determined to make him happy.

Title:All the King's Man (AO3)Author:pookaseraphSummary: The one where Charles is Madame de Pompadour and Erik is Louis XV, and I want to flail around in glee because it’s just that perfect. COMPLETE

Title:And these, from atoms - Part 2 (AO3)Author:kay_cricketedSummary: A long, wonderful story- which was picked back up in November. Erik and Charles are trapped inside a mine, dependent on each other for survival. Their isolation focuses the story into a complex study of their differing beliefs, post-divorce relationship, and the effects of Charles’ disability, five years after Cuba.

Title:As We Saunter Vaguely DownAuthor:alishatornSummary: Charles/Azazeal. A Hex crossover inspired by the double whammy of the Fassbender connection and use of the same manor house in both canons. Scorching hot and highly intriguing, Azazeal seduces an eighteen year-old Charles Xavier and (of course) turns out to have an ulterior motive.

Title:Beneath Me (AO3)Author:magnetism_bindSummary: Charles is the wealthy nobleman’s son, Erik is the hot stableman. Is more information truly required?